TERRI SCHIAVO, REFUGEES, AND IRAQ: THOUGHTS ON THE IRREVOCABLE OBLIGATIONS OF A CIVILIZED SOCIETY

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*** ORBUSMAX GUEST OP/ED *** TERRI SCHIAVO, REFUGEES, AND IRAQ: THOUGHTS ON THE IRREVOCABLE OBLIGATIONS OF A CIVILIZED SOCIETY - By Dan Brown November 23, 2003 THREE STORIES, each part of long-running events, have become prominent in public discussions lately that together but from very different directions highlight the societal pitfalls inherent in ignoring one of the most basic tenets that underpins any civilized society: The concept of the irrevocable obligation; the idea that it is possible to commit to something or someone in such a way that the very nature of the commitment makes it irrevocable. I posit: For a society to be civilized, that society must recognize that a commitment that creates total dependency is a commitment that cannot be recanted. For thinking, caring persons, this should serve as both an axiom and a caution. For various reasons ranging from the practical to the compassionate, individuals and whole Nations often take on commitments whose long-range ramifications are not considered. Increasingly today we see such commitments abrogated. To those dependent on the commitment, this is devastating. But the effect on those committed - the moral effect - is in truth even greater, for it is a poison of the spirit to commit such abandonment. Consider the case of Terri Schindler Schiavo. In 1990, Terry suffered a seizure that left her comatose for several weeks and from which her subsequent recovery has been very limited. Terry is very much alive; she is minimally responsive but utterly incapable of even the most basic action: She cannot even eat, and is fed with a tube. From the beginning of her predicament, this has been necessary. Michael Schiavo, meanwhile, although still married to Terri, has "gone on" with his life: He lives with another woman who has borne his children. In 1998, Michael petitioned the Court to remove the feeding tube and "allow" Terri to die - by starvation. For better, for worse, in sickness and in health, so long as you both shall live…. Certainly the circumstances are unusual. In former times the issue wouldn't have existed; the technology to prevent Terri's death is relatively new. But at some point a choice was made to employ that technology, and the people who made that choice knew her condition, thus stabilized, could likely be maintained indefinitely. Yet beginning in 1998, in more than two dozen individual Court actions, Judges have sided with Michael even though they knew people in Terri's condition have recovered after even longer illnesses. She would be dead today but for public outrage and legislative action. Practicality and convenience, or civilized obligation? Which the better path? We hear much about the Nazi Holocaust. What we seldom hear is it started long before the Second World War, long before Adolph Hitler rose to power. It started with the sterile musings of men like Alfred Hoche, who, in 1920 in his book "The Permission To Destroy Life Unworthy of Life" wrote "the incurably ill and the mentally retarded were costing millions of marks and taking up thousands of much-needed hospital beds. So doctors should be allowed to put them to death." By 1939 the Nazis had killed at least 200,000 "worthless eaters." More devastating to the abandoners than the abandoned… In my minds eye I see "conservative" heads nodding and "liberal" ones shaking… Let's turn that around. Let's consider the case outlined in a Seattle P-I story from November 12, 2003 entitled "Thousands of refugees face loss of U.S. benefits." In 1996, Congress granted Social Security benefits to immigrants who came to the United States as refugees seeking asylum. But they included a condition: Refugees must become citizens within five years - later lengthened to seven - or lose all Federal aid. Unlike "ordinary" immigrants, refugees are not sponsored. Unlike ordinary immigrants, refugees often have seen the worst man ever does to his fellows. Many of these people are old; most of the ones that have failed to meet the requirement have failed for reasons largely beyond their control. Some of the issues are personal; some involve bureaucratic snafus. For some, the basic requirements of reading, writing, speaking English and learning US history and Civics represent impossible hurdles. Common sense exercised at the time the offer was extended should have dictated that many of these people would never meet the requirements. Seven years is a long time: A long time to succeed or become utterly dependent. If five thousand such people received a twenty-year benefit at the stipulated rate of $6624 a year, the US taxpayers would be out $662,400,000 - about one-third the cost of a stealth bomber. "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost, to me," But only if they can pass a civics test and pay their own way. We don't want 'em too poor or too tired. And now for the hardest case of all for many of us: The war in Iraq. I have been against this venture from the beginning; I doubted the necessity and I think the foreign policy model often called "Nation Building" is deeply flawed. I would like nothing better than to personally hand GWB a pink slip next November for dragging us into this. But irrespective of who occupies the Oval Office in 2005, we can't quit in Iraq. Irrespective of the cost, we can't quit. Irrespective of the casualties, we can't quit. We can't quit until Iraq is again capable of functioning on all necessary levels. When we toppled the old regime, we accepted an obligation to replace it with something better than the thuggery of the Baathists. Today, the stark truth is the overall situation is in fact worse: Worse, but certainly improving, albeit at great cost. We cannot leave until the Iraqis succeed in forming a government that is able to fulfill all the necessary functions of a modern government - one of their design, not ours - and we must support the Iraqis until their economy becomes capable of supporting them. We must, for their lives and our souls. And we must learn to consider ourselves more carefully. As mankind grows in power and knowledge, our reach increases in space and time as well. As we wield great power, we accept great responsibility, and responsibility has a way of perpetuating itself, of morphing into new obligations tomorrow. Once upon a time, an American President "juiced the books" in a casus belli for a war many of his people opposed… A dig at GWB? No, the President I allude to was Woodrow Wilson. When we entered WWI, we tipped the scales in a conflict the outcome of which predicated most of the terrible events of the great century of war just passed. A good case can be made that the botched peace of Versailles led directly to WWII in Europe and contributed to the chaos that allowed the October Revolution to succeed; those two events created the Cold War. Even today, almost a century later, its echoes are heard: Iraq was created at the table of Versailles, created not by the peoples living there but by foreigners who were more interested in their own power than the needs of the people they made subject. So in a way, today the US is working to pay off the last of a very old obligation; we're working to undo the dregs that awful treaty. Let's hope we finally find the wisdom to avoid leaving such dregs for the next century.

----------------------------------------------------------- Dan Brown is a Materials Management Chemist, a graduate of the Evergreen State College, and of the University of Adversity.